I must be brutally honest with the readers of this review: when I first laid my eyes on this volume with the simple title The new Arctic I was not utterly impressed. And I can tell you the reason why this is the case. First, the book aligns itself with many other anthologies on Arctic change that I have reviewed over the last few years. Second, the Introduction by one of the editors, Birgitta Evengård, unsurprisingly clarifies that the book brings together ‘a variety of Arctic scholars, each with their own scientific background, approach, and understanding of the Arctic, and with their views on what drives change, why, and how, in an effort to create composite picture where insights from different disciplines can be intertwined and woven together’ (page 3). So far so good and certainly nothing groundbreaking. Upon a closer look, however, one element comes to the fore that indeed make this volume stand out: while confined to merely 350 pages, the book contains 24 chapters, all written by well-known and not-so-well-known experts of the Arctic. And one will immediately notice the truly inter- and cross-disciplinarily of this volume, tackling Arctic change from a multitude of angles.

As can be expected by the vigilant reader of this review, a short review like this does not allow for a summary and evaluation of each single chapter, so some degree of cherry-picking as well as broader summarising of the book is necessary. Thus, let us take a step back and take into consideration Evengård's introductory sentence cited above and the range of topics, or snapshots thereof, covered in this volume: narratives about Greenland, reindeer husbandry in Sweden, fleeting glaciers of the Arctic, the Arctic carbon cycle, the Arctic in fiction, human development and tourism in the Arctic, the ‘race’ for resources, circumpolar health, infectious diseases in the Arctic, or the emerging Arctic humanities. Given the volume's twenty-four chapters, the list goes on.

And one can argue that in the diversity of the book lies its greatest strength as well as its greatest weakness. Let us start with the weakness-part of the argument and let's get it over with: it appears as if the book lacks a focus and merely combines a plethora of different elements of Arctic research. One could imagine some chapters just being replaced by different ones dealing with Arctic change without changing the book itself. The absence of a summarising or concluding chapter that weaves the red threads of the book into a comprehensive whole further adds to this point of view. Therefore, one might argue, the book is a compilation of surely interesting research, but a scattered one, reminding of a music compilation on which it is easy to skip a song that doesn't interest you.

While I can see this line of argument coming up, my personal view is different – the strength-part of the argument. Because while indeed presenting research snapshots of the ‘new’ Arctic, the book is a fascinating account of the differences in how the Arctic is perceived, evaluated and scientifically approached. Since I am personally utterly interested in a multitude of topics, I found this volume not only incredibly exciting (and worrying at the same time), but it furthermore deepened my understanding of processes in the Arctic which I, as an Arctic governance scholar, would not have come across that easily. Especially the chapters dealing with natural science-phenomena of Arctic change are written in a way easily understandable to those not overly familiar with earth sciences and, luckily for me, do not contain much mathematical data. Surely, some diagrams can be found, but also these are easily understandable for the earth-scientifically untrained. At the same time, the book breaks away from the climate-change-resource-narrative and includes topics that are not commonly covered in Arctic anthologies. Take Nina Wormbs’ chapter on The assessed Arctic: how monitoring can be silently normative, for instance. She challenges commonly applied interactions between natural and social sciences and applied political changes based on natural scientific findings. One passage struck me in particular. Wormbs writes: ‘Would it be possible to write about human societies elsewhere [. . .] defining them as vital and resilient, or on the contrary lame and doomed? Probably not. Imagine a statement on New Yorkers, or inhabitants of the French city Lyon talked about in the same language’ (page 297). She explains this approach with the science-focus the Arctic has had that can still be found today even despite the diversification of research in the north. In terms of ‘decolonising methodologies’ (Tuhiwai Smith Reference Tuhiwai Smith1999) however, Wormbs could have asked whether Arctic communities would talk about themselves as being ‘vital and resilient’? Notwithstanding, Wormbs’ critical contribution is certainly noteworthy and should (both in conjunctive and imperative sense) open up critical pathways of thinking about scientific findings and their application.

Indeed, the absence of a summarising chapter is therefore probably a good thing. Because the book provides doors to many rooms, pathways, and maybe mazes of Arctic research. The well-referenced articles provide solid background literature on specific research topics that The new Arctic could serve as a starting point for. It is thus to conclude that the editors have done an outstanding job in putting together a book that is engaging, challenging, eye-opening and somewhat different than other anthologies on the Arctic! This proves, once again, that first impressions are not always what they seem to be. One or the other typo has found its way into the book – for example, I dare say that the editors refer to ‘indigeneity’ instead of ‘indignity’ (page vii) that the book deals with – but this does not impair the articles’ high quality. The new Arctic is thus highly recommendable for those aiming to get a broader picture of Arctic change. But the book goes beyond the notion of ‘Arctic change’ as it provides the reader with insight into the different approaches towards the global north, making it a diverse region with diverse cultures and discourses.